Jean Quan gestures as she addresses the media outside the Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, November 10, 2010. Quan informed those gathered that the results showing Quan leading in the Oakland mayoral race would not change with the remaining votes to be counted and she would be Oakland's next mayor.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Jean Quan gestures as she addresses the media outside the Oakland...

Image 2 of 3

Jean Quan reacts with supporters as she addresses the media outside the Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, November 10, 2010. Quan informed those gathered that the results showing Quan leading in the Oakland mayoral race would not change with the remaining votes to be counted and she would be Oakland's next mayor.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Jean Quan reacts with supporters as she addresses the media outside...

Image 3 of 3

Don Perata, candidate for mayor of Oakland, met with the San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Board on Friday, Oct. 15, 2010.

City Councilwoman Jean Quan won the final tally Wednesday in Oakland's ranked-choice mayoral election, capping a dramatic eight days in which she came from behind and surged to victory because she had more second- and third-place votes than rival Don Perata.

When first-place votes were initially counted after the Nov. 2 election, Quan had just 24 percent, and Perata had 35 percent. But Quan proved to be a more popular second and third choice among supporters of the other eight candidates, and in the end, she had 51 percent to Perata's 49 percent.

Alameda County Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald said Wednesday night that although a handful of ballots may remain to be counted, they would not alter the results.

The reversal of fortune means Quan will be the first woman and first Asian American to be mayor of Oakland when she succeeds Ron Dellums in January. It also marks a stunning defeat for Perata, once the most powerful Democrat in California politics as the state Senate president.

Debate about system

Quan's victory immediately set off a debate about the merits of ranked-choice voting, sometimes called instant runoffs. For Quan and her supporters, the system creates a path to victory for a candidate who is vastly outspent, as the councilwoman was by Perata.

For supporters of Perata, the election revealed ranked-choice to be a system that candidates can game to deny election to someone who wins the most first-place votes.

"This is really a victory for a grassroots effort in this city," Quan said at a news conference on the steps of City Hall. She said that when all the ranked-choice ballots were sorted, she received more votes than her two immediate predecessors, Dellums and Jerry Brown.

Quan said she would start hiring a transition team and stay true to the priorities she laid out during the campaign: fighting crime, luring jobs to Oakland, and providing opportunities for young people.

She also plans to hire a recruiter to find a city administrator to replace Dan Lindheim, who she said has agreed to stay on until a successor is found.

The Perata campaign's political consultant denounced the ranked-choice process.

"It's a travesty that a candidate that wins 78 percent of the precincts and leads by more than 11,000 votes (after first-choice votes are counted), with a margin of nearly 10 percent, loses the election," John Whitehurst said. "In any other contest, it would be a landslide win, not an election loss."

Ranked-choice voting, he said, "is an injustice, and Oakland will pay the price."

Perata team 'sore losers'

Quan discounted the importance of the system, saying she would have won in a traditional election.

Ultimately, she said, "if you win by one vote, you win."

Steven Hill, an elections consultant who helped draft the charter amendments in Oakland and San Francisco authorizing ranked-choice voting, said Perata's campaign consultants were sore losers.

"They knew what the rules were," Hill said.

Perata was unavailable for comment, but he scheduled a news conference for this morning.

Ranked-choice voting allows voters to cast their first, second and third choices. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, last-place candidates are eliminated and their votes distributed until one candidate reaches the threshold of 50 percent plus one.

Strategy pays off for Quan

This was the first election in which Oakland has used the system.

Quan had been campaigning for months for people to vote for "anybody but Don." She had told supporters to list City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan as their second choice.

Kaplan, in turn, told her supporters and others to list Quan second or third.

The strategy paid off for Quan when Kaplan, who finished third, was eliminated and her votes redistributed. Quan won 75 percent of them - pushing her from a 10,372-vote deficit to a 2,058-vote victory.

Perata never told supporters whom they should list second and third. As he pulled ahead on the strength of first-place votes on election night, he was asked by a KTVU-TV reporter what he thought would happen next.

"It's a good question," he said. "I don't understand how ranked-choice voting works."